Week 16.5 - A beautiful cervix and luscious veins.

There has been much excitement this week. Today we saw the perinatologist for the level 2 ultrasound, also known as the anatomy scan.

The important thing is that we were able to see the genders. We were pretty sure what they were since we did PGD with the IVF, but there's always that chance (however slim, it's still a chance) that it might have been wrong. Baby B is for sure a boy. The tech could see his little dinker donger very clearly. Baby A was a little shy, but from what she could see, the tech was leaning towards it being a girl. So we're calling it at that. Now that we know for sure (pretty much), I'm happy to finally share the names we picked. We've had the boy's name picked for years because that's what we initially wanted. The girl's name was a little harder because we hadn't even considered having a girl and we couldn't agree for a while. But we are both thrilled with the names we picked. Allow me to introduce you to Baby A, now known as Charlotte Sue and Baby B, now known as Nathan Henry.

Like I said, we had Nathan picked for years. We both just loved the name from the beginning. We chose Henry for the middle name because it's a family name on both of our sides. We knew we wanted the girl's middle name to be Sue, after my mother. But the first name eluded us for a while. We considered Emily, Emma, Delilah, Hannah and some others but none of them seemed perfect. We had considered Charlotte but I realized that some family friends of ours have a boy and a girl, named Nathan and Charlotte. I thought it would be weird, but they were cool with it so we decided to go for it. We haven't had any second thoughts at all, so I think that's a sign that these are the perfect names.

Now, on the chance that A does turn out to be a boy after all, we have a second boy's name picked and that would be Noah Joseph. We don't need a second girl's name since we know for sure one is a boy.

They did some bloodwork today for the MSAFP test. This tests for elevated protein in the blood, which could indicate a problem. If there is a defect in the spinal cord or brain it could leak alpha-fetoprotein, which would show up in a blood test. The doctor did say they looked perfect on the ultrasound and they are growing well, but after all we've gone through to make these babies, we'd rather be on the safe side. He also said my girlfriend's cervix looked beautiful and the phlebotomist said her veins were luscious. So we're looking pretty good so far. We have two more appointments in two weeks. One with the regular O/B and another with the perinatologist.

We got some more exciting baby news. Not for us, of course. But for our friends that just moved into the neighborhood. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that. When we were buying our house, one of my friends that I work with kept seeing my pictures on Facebook and asking me about it. It's the guy that helped me pick up the baby dresser, actually. Anyway, one day he asked us to take him to the models. The next day he took his girlfriend out there. And shortly after that they had a picture on their Facebook of her putting the "Sold!" button on the map. They bought the same model as us on the next street over.

Well anyway, soon after we moved we did the embryo transfer and when it worked, his girlfriend told him it's time for them to start making a baby. So they did over the summer and it worked! She's about 10 weeks behind us, but our kids will be in the same grade in school and grow up together. This is really exciting for us because for one, we don't have many friends to begin with. I have very few at work because people come and go so frequently, I try not to get attached. But I really like this guy and now that we're neighbors we'll be friends even if one of us changes schools. And we have very few friends with young children. Most of our parent friends around our age started way before us so their kids are like in middle school. And I wouldn't really call the moms from the multiples group friends, at least not yet. But now we'll have parent friends with kids the same age as ours and in the same neighborhood. It worked out perfectly.